Bioengineered Organs Initiative

Cook Cardiopulmonary Engineering Group

Keith Cook's research focuses on applying engineering to critical care medicine. This research melds mechanical, chemical, and material science concepts toward the development of artificial and tissue-based lungs, pulmonary drug delivery, and the computational modeling and prevention of coagulation in medical devices.

Faculty

Keith Cook

Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Current research projects in his group include thoracic artificial lungs, biofabricated tissue-based lungs, new biomaterial approaches for reducing coagulation at artificial surfaces, and perfluorocarbon emulsions for pulmonary drug delivery. Of note, his laboratory was the first to produce 24-hour, one-week, and 30-day in vivo studies of thoracic artificial lungs, and his group is working on an artificial lung intended as destination therapy for years of respiratory support. Professor Cook currently serves as the Faculty Director of the Bioengineered Organs Initiative at CMU and is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Projects

Destination therapy artificial lungs

Only a small fraction of patients who need a lung transplant will ever be placed on the waiting list. Thus, our group is developing permanent means of respiratory support for patients with chronic lung disease. To achieve this, we need to expand the useful lifetime of artificial lungs to allow permanent, home-based support. Projects in this area include development of compact, highly biocompatible artificial lungs; various means to slow blood clotting within these devices; and biofabricated, tissue-based lungs.

Pulmonary drug delivery using perfluorocarbon emulsions

In many lung diseases, direct delivery of inhaled drugs to the lungs is desired, but the diseased airways are blocked by mucus or inflammatory exudates. To overcome this issue, our group emulsifies drugs within perfluorocarbon liquids (PFCs) and delivers these emulsions to the lungs. When instilled in the lung, PFC emulsions penetrate down to the alveolar level, wash out harmful fluids, open airways, provide normal or even enhanced gas exchange, and hasten lung recovery. Current applications include severe respiratory infections and acute lung injury.

Blood begins to clot instantly whenever it touches an artificial material. Over time, this causes failure of numerous blood bearing medical devices, including catheters, grafts, and various artificial organs. Our group works to develop various approaches to passivate biomaterial surfaces in these devices and thus slow coagulation, but without using systemic anticoagulants that can cause bleeding. We are currently exploring the use of zwitterionic surface coatings, surface nitric oxide flux, and highly selective inhibitors of the intrinsic branch of the coagulation cascade.

Research team

Neil Carleton

Lab Manager

Research interests

Assisting with in vivo surgeries and post-operative care; developing in vitro methods for evaluating antibacterial properties of nitric oxide and copper nanoparticles in artificial lung setting

Diane Nelson

Rei Ukita

Doctorate

Research interests

Biomaterial and biochemical approaches to reduce blood coagulation in an artificial lung settin, and the various methods of evaluating such approaches; applying low-fouling zwitterionic polymer coatings and nitric oxide surface flux to artificial lung gas fibers to reduce protein adsorption and platelet activation; using animal models and bench top blood-contact experiments to evaluate these different strategies. Ultimately, these different approaches can be combined to extend the longevity of artificial lungs, which can then be used as destination therapy for chronic lung disease patients.

“The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient’s hopes are the physician’s secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.” Norman Cousins